We’re within another storm. Amy. Fair bit of rain, very high winds. Feels soupy outside. Large bits of bark from the eucalyptus tree in the next garden all over my garden.
I had a whole other post ready to go today. But, then I saw the mushroom from another planet.
We’ll get to that in a minute, but first a history of my relationship with fungi.
I was late to actually eating mushrooms. I can’t recall my mother using them in her cooking. I don’t remember them showing up in TV dinners or even when we (infrequently) went out to eat growing up.
The one place I might have expected them would have been my mother’s Beef Bourguignon. Hers was wonderful, but it was beef in a sauce. I don’t remember vegetables. We usually had it with egg noodles. Ah, Pennsylvania Dutch egg noodles.
I don’t think I encountered them to eat till I was in my mid-20s.
Now, however, they are a staple. I use a lot of brown capped ones. Portobello, and Shiitake. The latter two I get from the farm shop. They add so much flavour and texture to all kinds of things: soups, omelettes or scrambled eggs, weird stir fries.
I understand that Shiitake in particular are great for gut health (those bacteria get really happy).
Anyway, why mushrooms today?
As I’ve noted too many times it gets wet here and all kinds of weird and not so wonderful things pop up. In the garden I generally dig them up and dispose of them in the garden trug so the dog doesn’t go near them. Weird bluish ones. Cupped black things on the old bay tree stump that make me uncomfortable. Basic beige things.
But the other day on my walk up the lane after a really peculiar day of beautiful blue skies and torrential rain there it was, all by itself on the side of the road. Like something out of science fiction, or Disney, or an end-of-the-world film.
Le mushroom gargantua.
Seriously, this thing was a foot across (really, seriously — and sorry, I wasn’t going to get near it to do an exact measurement). I have never seen anything like it here.
Looking it up (thank you, google) it appears to a Macrolepiota procera – and it’s supposed to be edible. NO THANKS.
Anyway, after stopping and staring for a good 5 minutes, I wondered, as a perfumista does, about mushrooms in fragrance and the only thing I could come up with on the rest of my walk and at home was Frederic Malle’s Une Rose. I bought this unsniffed decades ago on the basis that it was an ‘earthy rose’ which sounded awesome.
There was the vague comment on some reviews that there was a mushroom note and for some people this ruined what was otherwise something gorgeous. I thought: not me, that won’t happen to me.
But of course it did. And after trying very hard for a few days my bottle got rehomed with someone who got no mushroom at all.
I can do some things that do weird turns in perfume, eg, saffron.
I went looking for other fragrances and came up with the following, none of which I had any clue about – and which showed up on a 10 year old Reddit post: Midnight Gypsy Alchemy, November in the Temperate Forest by For Strange Women, someone mentioned BPAL (Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab — which used to be huge on the Makeup Alley fragrance board) having some. Some truly great names there.
So, yes. I wonder how long that giant mushroom will survive before someone (sadly) trashes it.
Do you like mushrooms to eat? Have any perfume in which the note is included?
Pics: pexels, mine
Chypre Mousse has notes of mushrooms and xhestnuts
Thanks, will look it up. I don’t really think I ‘want’ a mushroom note but I’m quite curious as to what’s out there.
The first kind of mushrooms that come to my mind are champignons but they taste too mild and and boring. I use them like a kind of filler with grilled vegetables. I cook mostly with porcini mushrooms who have a more intense taste.
Speaking of perfumes with a mushroom note there is an interesting perfume called Someone Else’s Flowers by Freddie Albrighton. The top notes are radish, watercress, chlorophyll but it truly smells like mushrooms in humid earth. This strange phase lasts for a good half hour and if you can make it through, you’ll be rewarded with a nice flower bouquet smell, fresh and watery.
Yup, filler or add in to up the oomph in a dish. I wouldn’t put them in an omelette.
So, a sort of vegetable garden perfume. Will look it up.
My experience with mushrooms is much like yours. It’s odd because my mother said she liked them and even foraged for them as a child. I like them, fried, stuffed, and raw in salad, though when they’re fried, it feels like I’m eating tasty rubber.
I don’t think I’d like mushroom in perfume, but I do like truffle, a cousin fungi as in TF Black Orchid edt (do not like the parfum version) and TF Noir de Noir and Fort and Manle Charlatan. That earthy note just makes them!
Fried mushrooms. Not really done that.
I’ve yet to meet a TF I really love but they are pretty easy to find even here so will nose around a bit.
I love mushrooms – fortunately, so does my husband. We eat them as a vegetable side dish, and put them in many entrees. I never had them as a child, so I’m not sure when I started (Mom’s cooking was..pedestrian. That’s the nicest word I can come up with.)
However, mushrooms aren’t a note I would seek out in a perfume.
I’m sure somewhere there’s a mushroom note that works. But no, I haven’t found it.
I think mushrooms are strange enough to be intriguing. To me, they are an adult food, particularly the wild ones.
I despise mushrooms as a food. There is something about the taste, texture and smell when they are being used as food. When I smelled an actual Gardenia flower, I got a huge mushroom note that wasn’t too horrible.
Our individual tastes are so interesting. I have a friend who can’t abide avocado. It’s the texture and nothing would make her eat it.
The only mushroom note I’ve sniffed in perfumery is the much missed TF Velvet Gardenia. Fabulous!
I adore mushrooms. As a small child I asked my parents if I could live on them. I remember the answer being, you could but you wouldn’t be very well.
I have never been foraging for them but have bought wild mushrooms from the local Farmers Market. That died during the plague years so wild mushrooms are from dried jars or packs.
I rarely cook mushroom based dishes unless I’m dining alone, DH hates the texture of them.
Personally I adore mushrooms however they come. Portobellos baked whole with the gills uppermost spread with garlic & mustard butter. Eaten in a bread roll of your choice. Perfect steakish sandwich.
The weirdest dish is my most beloved. A breakfast dish through my dad’s family, a couple of streaky bacon cooked fully crisp & broken into bits in a bowl. Sliced mushrooms stewed in the bacon fat til the juices run, add whole milk & pepper to taste. Bring to the boil then simmer until the milk starts to thicken. Check the seasoning & serve over the bacon with a soft bread roll & eat like soup. It’s my comfort dish & makes me very happy with or without bacon.
That breakfast dish without the milk sounds good, but I guess the milk is part of the point.
I’ve never been foraging either and I wouldn’t trust myself no matter how good the guidance was. I just can’t get my head round it.
What a great topic, Cinnamon! I also grew up without exposure to eating mushrooms. The closest would have been Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup on green beans, a classic sidedish served at Thanksgiving. So to me they were exotic. Nowadays, I like them on pizza with black olives (my favorites) if someone else likes those, too. But my husband says, “let there be no fungus among us.” So mushrooms are pretty much off the menu. I don’t know of any scent with a mushroom note.
I am sort of perplexed about the lack of mushrooms in the family diet. My mother ate all kinds of weird and not so wonderful things that she didn’t serve the rest of us.
Aftelier Cepes and Tuberose! It’s weirdly wonderful (wonderfully weird?) Where I live now is my first encounter with stinkhorn mushrooms. You should google them, very NSFW images, they are very … phallic. They attract flies and thus smell terrible. I thought something had died in the yard. I go out there with gloves and a small shovel and pop them out of the ground to bag up for the trash. I was horrified the first time I saw one. I think yours is stunning, though — maybe there are fairies living under there. Yeah I’m not eating any foraged mushrooms, although I do like mushrooms a lot.
Ah, I forgot about that one. It is weirdly wonderful. Very interesting notes list.
Uh, no, on the stinky mushroom. In fact, yuck. There are enough things here that attract flies — don’t need anything else.
You beat me to it!
We did have mushrooms growing up- the white button ones you’d get in the market. I’d no more forage for mushrooms than I’d forage for chicken though. If I’m going to forage it’ll be at Saks Off Fifth or N-M Last Call. I do love mushrooms though and am glad the markets carry more than just button ones.
Thanks for the good laugh! I wouldn’t forage mushrooms either. I’d probably overthink it and pick the poisonous ones. I’m laughing at what you would forage for, though I admit that it would be my preference too. lolololol.
I was brought up foraging for morels every spring (still think they’re the most delicious mushrooms in the world), and in my young adulthood did a bit of foraging for other types. Chanterelles (they smell of apricots), champignons (fairy ring mushrooms), puffballs (pretty safe as long as you slice them lengthwise to make sure they’re not the button form of something deadly) and a few others. I had an excellent field guide and a rigorous identification protocol which included taking a spore print of each mushroom. I also remembered the mushroom hunters warning: “There are old mushroom hunters and bold mushroom hunters, but there are no old, bold mushroom hunters.” I have lived to be old, so I guess I wasn’t bold!
As to fragrances with a mushroom note, it doesn’t sound terribly appealing but many things used in perfume sound kind of awful but end up smelling divine!
That’s incredible. From my perspective, you are brave. I love the ‘no old bold mushroom hunters’.
I am very curious about the Temperate Forest fragrance I mentioned, but mostly for the name. I would certainly buy a sample but I don’t think that’s possible any more.
I bow to you- I am way too much of both wuss and scaredycat to get mushrooms out of the wild.
You and I could’ve been food twins, cinnamon! My mother was a phenomenal ’from scratch’ cook ( but oh, how I longed to try a TV dinner) and yet mushrooms never made an appearance. It wasn’t until I started spending time with mmy cousins’ families that I noticed them.
Despite having cooked for decades ( including a couple of stints as a line cook )I have a weird relationship with mushrooms, loving the flavor they impart but always looking at them askance internally. Then I eat one… and I get over myself.
Ah, but I’m not a soft scrambled egg girl. ‘Askance internally’ — do you mean the weird undersides, particularly for wild ones? I generally feel like I’m doing something a bit out there when I cook mushrooms. I don’t think it’s logical, but such are these things.
No… I meant my internal Crazy still looks at them askance ( a bit) even though I use them in cooking regularly.
But then, when I eat one, I’m reminded just how delicious they are.